The Black Obelisk (29 page)

"An ear?" Otto stops.

"Of course there are ladies who don't tear them off," I reply. "But you'd hardly want to know
them
.
What you want, after all, is the primeval woman in all her splendor."

"An ear is a pretty big sacrifice," Otto remarks, drying the lenses of his spectacles.

"Poetry demands sacrifices. With an ear torn off you would be in the truest sense a blood-drenched lyricist. Come along!"

"Yes, but an ear! Something that can be seen so easily!"

"If I had my choice," Hans Hungermann says, "I would much rather have an ear torn off than be castrated, to speak frankly."

"What's that?" Otto stops again. "You're joking! That doesn't happen!"

"It happens all right," Hungermann declares. "Passion is capable of anything. But be calm, Otto: Castration is a punishable offense. The woman would get at least a couple of months in jail—and you would be avenged."

"Nonsense!" Bambuss stammers, smiling painfully. "You're just making fun of me!"

"Why should he make fun of you?" I say. "That would be mean. I recommended Fritzi to you for that very reason. She is an ear fetishist. Overcome by passion she convulsively gets hold of her partner's ears, with both hands. So you can be absolutely sure you won't be injured elsewhere. She doesn't have a third hand."

"But she still has two feet," Hungermann explains. "Sometimes they perform wonders with their feet. They let the nails grow and sharpen them."

"You're just pretending," Otto says in torment. "Don't talk nonsense!"

"Listen to me," I reply. "I don't want you to be maimed. You would profit emotionally, but your soul would be impoverished and your poetry would suffer. I have here a pocket nail file, small, handy, and made for accomplished worldlings who must always be elegant. Take it. Keep it hidden in the palm of your hand or slip it into the mattress before things start If you see that it's getting too dangerous, a little harmless prick in Fritzi's
derrière
will be enough to do the trick. No blood need flow. Whenever anyone is bitten, even by a gnat, he lets go and reaches for the bite, that's one of the axioms of life. In the meantime you'll escape."

I take out a red leather pocket case in which there are a comb and a nail file. It was a gift from the faithless Erna. The comb is made of artificial tortoise shell. A belated wave of rage rises in me as I take it out. "Give me the comb too," Otto says.

"You can't hack at her with a comb, you innocent satyr," Hungermann declares. "That's no weapon for the battle of the sexes. It will break on the convulsed flesh of the maenad."

"I don't want to hack at her. I want to comb my hair afterward."

Hungermann and I look at each other. It seems that Bambuss no longer believes us. "Have you a first-aid package with you?" Hungermann asks me.

"We don't need one. The Madame has a whole apothecary shop."

Bambuss stops again. "That's all nonsense! But what about venereal disease?"

"This is Saturday. All the ladies were examined this afternoon. No danger, Otto."

"You know everything, don't you?"

"We know what's necessary for life," Hungermann replies. "And usually that is something entirely different from what you learn in school and in the institutions of higher learning. That's why you're such a unique specimen, Otto."

"I was brought up too piously," Bambuss sighs. "I grew up in fear of hell and of syphilis. With such a start how can you turn into an earthy lyricist?"

"You might marry."

"That's my third complex. Fear of marriage. My mother drove my father crazy. Simply by weeping. Isn't that strange?"

"No," Hungermann and I say in unison and shake hands on it. That mean's we'll have seven more years to live. Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.

Before we enter the cozy-looking house with its poplar trees, its red lanterns, and the blooming geraniums at the windows we fortify ourselves with a few swallows of schnaps. We have brought a bottle with us and we hand it round. Even Eduard, who has driven ahead in his Opel and has been waiting, joins us; it isn't often he gets a free drink and he enjoys it. The same drink that we are now having at a cost to ourselves of some ten thousand marks will be priced at forty thousand in the cat house—that's why we brought the bottle. Up to the doorsill we live economically—after that we're at the mercy of Madame.

At first Otto is seriously disillusioned. He expected not a taproom but an oriental setting with leopard skins, swinging lamps, and heavy perfume; instead, the ladies, lightly clad, rather resemble servant maids. He asks me in a low voice whether there aren't any Negresses or Creoles. I point to a thin, black-haired creature. "That one over there has Creole blood. She is just out of the penitentiary. Murdered her husband."

Otto doubts it. But he brightens when the Iron Horse comes in. She makes an imposing picture in high, laced boots, black underwear, a kind of lion tamer's uniform, a gray astrakhan cap, and a mouth full of gold teeth. Generations of young poets and editors have passed their examination in life on her, and she has been selected for Otto, too, by prearrange-ment. She or Fritzi. We have insisted that she appear in full regalia—and she has not disappointed us.

She is taken aback when we introduce Otto. No doubt she expected to be handed something fresher and younger. Bambuss looks as though he were made of paper—pale, thin, pirnply, with a straggly mustache, and he is twenty-six years old. In addition, he is sweating at the moment like a salted horseradish. The Iron Horse bares her golden fangs in a good-humored grin and nudges the shuddering Bambuss in the ribs. "Come on, stand us a cognac," she says companionably.

"What does a cognac cost?" Otto asks the waitress.

"Sixty thousand."

"What's that?" Hungermann asks in alarm. "Forty thousand, not a pfenning more!"

"Pfenning," says the Madame. "That's a word I haven't heard in a long time."

"Forty thousand was yesterday, my pet," the Iron Horse explains.

"It was forty thousand this morning. I was here this morning on behalf of the committee."

"What committee?"

"The Committee for the Rebirth of Poetry through Personal Experience."

"My pet," says the Iron Horse, "that was before the dollar quotation."

"It was after the eleven o'clock exchange."

"It was before the afternoon one," explains the Madame. "Don't be such skinflints!"

"Sixty thousand is based on the dollar exchange for day after tomorrow," I say.

"On the one for tomorrow. Every hour brings you nearer to it Calm down! The dollar exchange is like death. You can't escape it. Isn't your name Ludwig?"

"Rolf," I reply firmly. "Ludwig did not come back from the war."

Hungermann is suddenly seized by a horrid suspicion. "And the tariff?" he asks. "How much is that? Our agreement was for two million. Undressing and a half-hour's conversation afterward included. The conversation is important for our candidate."

"Three million," the Iron Horse replies phlegmatically. "And that's cheap."

"Comrades, we have been betrayed!" Hungermann roars.

"Do you know what you have to pay now for high boots that reach almost to your bottom?" the Iron Horse asks.

"Two million and not a centime more. When agreements are no longer respected even here, what's to become of the world?"

"Agreements! What are agreements when the exchange wobbles like a drunken man?"

Mathias Grund, who as author of the "Book of Death" has been appropriately silent until now, gets up. "This is the first cat house that has been undermined by National Socialism," he announces angrily. "Treaties are scraps of paper, eh?"

"Treaties and money," the Iron Horse replies imperturbably. "But high boots are high boots and fancy black underwear is fancy black underwear. Madly expensive. Why don't you pick a cheaper class for your candidate for confirmation? The way they do with funerals—you can have them either with or without plumes. Second class is plenty good enough for him!"

There is nothing to be said to that. The discussion has reached a dead end. Suddenly Hungermann discovers that Bambuss has quietly downed both his own and the Iron Horse's cognac.

"We're lost," he says. "We'll have to pay what these Wall Street hyenas demand. You shouldn't have done that to us, Otto! Now we'll have to arrange your initiation into life in a simpler fashion. Without plumes and with only a cast-iron horse."

Fortunately at this moment Willy comes in. He is full of curiosity about Otto's transformation into a man and he pays the difference without the quiver of an eyelash. Then he orders schnaps for all of us and announces that he has made twenty-five million today on his stocks. He intends to drink up part of it. "Off with you, boy," he says to Otto. "And come back a man!"

Otto disappears upstairs.

I sit down beside Fritzi. The old quarrel has been long since forgotten; since her son was killed in the war she no longer regards us as half-children. He was a noncom and was shot three days before the armistice. We talk about the times before the war. She tells me her son studied music in Leipzig. He wanted to be an oboe player. Beside us the huge Madame is sleeping, a bulldog on her knees.

Suddenly a scream resounds from upstairs. Uproar follows and then Otto appears in his underdrawers followed by the furious Iron Horse, who is beating him over the head with a tin washbasin. Otto has good running form; he races through the front door, and three of us stop the Iron Horse. "That damned half-portion!" she wheezes. "He went to work on me with a knife!"

"It wasn't a knife," I say, realizing what has happened.

"What do you mean?" The Iron Horse turns around and points to a red spot above her black underwear.

"It's not bleeding. It was only a nail file."

"A nail file?" The Horse stares at me. "That's a new one on me! And that beggar prince pricks me instead of me pricking him! Don't my boots mean anything? And my collection of whips? I wanted to be decent to him and give him a little taste of sadism as a bonus; just a playful slap across his skinny shanks with a whip, and the deceitful, spectacled snake went to work on me with a pocket nail file! A sadist! Do I need a sadist? I, the dream girl of the masochists? What an insult!"

We quiet her down with a double kümmel. Then we go to look for Bambuss. He is standing behind a lilac bush, feeling his head.

"Come along, Otto, the danger is past," Hungermann calls.

Bambuss refuses. He asks us to throw his clothes to him. "Absolutely not," Hungermann declares. "Three million are three million! We have paid for you."

"Ask for the money back! I won't let myself be cut to pieces."

"A cavalier never asks a lady to return money. And we're going to make you into a cavalier if we have to smash your head doing it. The whip was just an act of friendship. The Iron Horse is a sadist"

"What?"

"A rigorous masseuse. We just forgot to tell you. But you should be happy to have had an experience of that kind. It's rare in small cities!"

"I'm not happy. Throw my things out here."

We succeed in luring him in again after he has dressed behind the lilac bush. We give him a drink. But we cannot get him to leave the table. He maintains that the mood is gone. Finally Hungermann reaches an agreement with the Iron Horse and the Madame. Bambuss is to have the right to return within a week without additional payment.

We go on drinking. After a while I notice that Otto seems to have caught fire despite everything. He keeps glancing across at the Iron Horse and pays no attention to the other ladies. Willy orders more kümmel. After a while we miss Eduard. He appears a half-hour later sweating, saying that he has been for a walk. The kümmel gradually produces its effect Suddenly Otto Bambuss gets out paper and pencil and begins secretly making notes. I look over his shoulder. The title is "The Tigress." "Hadn't you better wait a while with your free verse?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "The first impression is the most important."

"But after all, you only had one slash across your bottom with a whip and then a couple of bangs on the head with a washbasin! What's tigerish about that?"

"Just leave it to me!" Bambuss pours another kümmel through his straggly mustache. "That's where the power of imagination comes in! I am already blooming with verses like a rosebush. What am I saying? Like an orchid in the jungle!"